How Has Twitter Changed How Journalists Report on Sports? the 2012 Missouri Grand Prix
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HOW HAS TWITTER CHANGED HOW JOURNALISTS REPORT ON SPORTS? THE 2012 MISSOURI GRAND PRIX _____________________________________________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School University of Missouri _____________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________________________ by ROSELLEN DOWNEY Dr. Lee Wilkins, Thesis Supervisor MAY 2012 (C) Copyright by Rosellen Downey 2012 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled HOW HAS TWITTER CHANGED HOW JOURNALISTS REPORT ON SPORTS? THE 2012 MISSOURI GRAND PRIX Presented by Rosellen Downey A candidiate for the degree of Master of Arts And hereby certify that in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. ____________________________________________ Professor Lee Wilkins _____________________________________________ Professor Clyde Bentley _____________________________________________ Professor Randy Reeves _____________________________________________ Professor Matthew Martens ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professor Lee Wilkins for helping me through the entire thesis process. Her patience and expertise was greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank the remainder of my thesis committee, Dr. Clyde Bentley, Dr. Matthew Martens and Professor Randy Reeves for their guidance. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..........................................................................................ii LIST OF TABLES......................................................................................................iv ABSTRACT................................................................................................................v Chapter I. LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................1 II. DESIGN AND METHOD...................................................................................23 III. DATA PRESENTATION..................................................................................39 IV. DATA ANALYSIS............................................................................................66 V. CONCLUSIONS.................................................................................................76 REFERENCES............................................................................................................83 APPENDIX A. CATEGORIES FOR TWEET CONTENT ANALYSIS....................................88 B. QUESTIONS FOR IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW SESSIONS................................90 C. TWEETS FOR CODING....................................................................................92 D. CODING SHEET...............................................................................................132 E. COLLEAGUE CODING SHEET......................................................................174 F. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS..........................................................................179 iii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Number of tweets per day.............................................................................40 2. Number of tweets by the hour.......................................................................42 3. Number of tweets per participant..................................................................45 4. Number of tweets per tweet category............................................................47 5. Number of retweets per participant...............................................................49 iv HOW HAS TWITTER CHANGED HOW JOURNALISTS REPORT ON SPORTS? THE 2012 MISSOURI GRAND PRIX Rosellen Downey Dr. Lee Wilkins, Thesis Supervisor ABSTRACT The theoretical framework of this study is gatekeeping and it specifically analyzes Twitter use by eight journalists during the weekend of the 2012 Missouri Grand Prix, which took place February 10 through 12, 2012. A convenience sample was used (n=249) representing all of the tweets posted by these eight people between 12:01 a.m. on February 10 and 11:59 p.m. on February 13. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to analyze all data collected. This thesis examined the number of tweets per day, the number of tweets per hour, the number of tweets per participant, the number of tweets per tweet category and the number of retweets per participant. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant to find out how Twitter was used during the weekend of the 2012 Missouri Grand Prix and how it is used on a daily basis in their jobs as journalists. A major finding is that these eight journalists use Twitter truly as a social media tool, meaning that they use it to interact with fans and colleagues through the personal messages, replies and retweets. This study contributes to a general lack of research about Twitter use by journalists that currently exists in the scholarly literature. v CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW Gatekeeping Gatekeeping cannot be examined without first acknowledging its presence in the culture of the newsroom. It is the sociology of the newsroom that allows for, cultivates and encourages the gatekeeping process. Jeremy Tunstall's landmark 1971 book Journalists at work presented a case study of 200 journalists at work. Tunstall's insight into newsroom sociology as a whole helped define concepts like the complex routine that helps explain journalism as a profession, the comparison between newsgathering and news processing and the reasons why the time constraints imposed by deadlines can affect these processes. This book detailed the handful of factors present in most newsrooms that eventually lead to gatekeeping (1971, 1-7). As described in Vos and Shoemaker (2009), in 1947 Kurt Lewin published a study that described the channels in which food makes its way to the family dinner table. He described in detail the various decisions that go into processing the food so that it can move from the grocery store or family garden to the dinner table. It was his theory that each piece of produce must survive multiple stages of acceptance or rejection before being chosen by the family cook. Lewin, as described in Vos and Shoemaker (2009), even theorized that an item's post store location in the pantry or fridge could affect its ability to survive the entire journey from farm to dinner plate. This example using food as a metaphor may seem abstract but it was the way in which Lewin, as detailed by Vos and Shoemaker (2009), described the process that 1 connected it to later gatekeeping studies. His original study was the beginning of research into different levels of influence in the gatekeeping process. He was the first to show that items could be thrown out or accepted at various points in the process and that different gatekeepers have different amounts of influence on the system (Vos and Shoemaker 2009, 12-13). Lewin, as detailed by Vos and Shoemaker (2009), was not the only academic to theorize that the gatekeeping process could occur in or near the family home. Other researchers have looked at how marketing firms directly target the gatekeeper with hopes of selling their products. These gatekeepers can come in the form of people who work as buyers for retailers. In continuing the metaphor of the family dinner table, the homemaker who looks at the selection of products to purchase and chooses the one that they feel will best feed their family can act as a gatekeeper as well (McQuail and Windahl 1982, 197). David Manning White (1950) was the first researcher to bring the theory of gatekeeping and the newsroom together. His landmark study examined the choices made by a single wire editor at a 30,000-circulation paper. White (1950) asked his subject to keep every single piece of wire copy that passed through his desk for a period of a week. White (1950) was attempting to determine why each story was accepted or rejected by the wire editor. This study was vastly important for two reasons, it was the first of its kind and it gave some insight into why an individual might choose a specific piece of news for publication. "Mr. Gates," as he is known in the study, was particular about the news that he picked for his paper and it was usually based on one of two things, he considered it to be 2 newsworthy or he considered it to be novel and not overly reported. White's (1950) study gave the academic world its first look at gatekeeping at the individual level. This study's methods would be often repeated in the years to come (1950, 383-396). McQuail and Windahl (1982) noted two major issues with White's original theory. First, he makes no mention of the organizational pressures that can lead to the process of gatekeeping. Second, they found fault in the idea that there is only a single gate with which information can pass through and they felt that the way in which he described the flow of news was very passive. They conclude their criticisms with an acknowledgement that White contributed much to the study of communication and that his "Mr. Gates" study was an influential piece of original research (1982, 167). Another early study into the effects of gatekeeping came from Warren Breed (1955). Unlike White's research into the gatekeeping process of the individual, Breed (1955) was interested in how the social setting of the newsroom and the organization that housed it affected the gatekeeping process. He theorized that the publisher usually set